The ballroom, which had thought it had run out of silences, found one more.
“Don’t you dare,” Maeve breathed.
“I told you Dorian was giving me money!” Lyra’s voice climbed to a shriek, all of the emerald-silk composure gone.
“I bought you that handbag!
I gave you those earrings — the ones you’re wearing — and you told me that as long as Dorian was happy, no one needed to know!”
Sixty pairs of eyes moved, again, to the pearls at Maeve’s ears, and to the designer bag on her arm, and the last piece of it clicked into place in Odette’s mind with an almost audible sound.
Maeve had not shielded the affair out of love for anyone.
She had been paid to look away.
The matriarch who lectured the county on loyalty had sold her silence for accessories.
Rhys turned to his mother, and his voice was barely a whisper.